


Carrying on

by lord_R2_D2 (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bad Puns, M/M, Mpreg, Stillbirth, The galaxy is a cruel place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 05:57:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7562974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/lord_R2_D2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their newborn daughter is perfect and beautiful and so very, very dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carrying on

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bodies, Can't You See?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7330408) by [sual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sual/pseuds/sual). 



She is warm from being inside Hux, her soft skin yielding easily under his gentle grip. Tiny toes and fingers which amaze Kylo with their sheer fragility. He pauses to bend them slowly, finding each digit flawlessly articulated. Her pink lips are slightly parted, never to take in their first breath of air. A thin wisp of russet hair on her milk-white scalp stirs in the med bay’s artificial, air-conditioned breeze, which is the only movement to be seen in the infant.

Their newborn daughter is perfect and beautiful and so very, very dead.

*

The funeral, if a small supply box constitutes a coffin and a few words spoken by the only person in attendance counts as a eulogy, takes place a few hours later. In a small stand of trees five Galactic miles away from the base, Kylo digs into the dark soil with a small gardening shovel he’d taken from a maintenance shed.

It’s mildly morbid, how something that was used to plant new life into the dirt is now necessary for the complete opposite. Even so, he finds it difficult to think of the small body tucked into a box as that, as an empty fleshy thing devoid of any animating spirit. Painful to feel the Force hum around him but through her.

Kylo presses a kiss to her cold forehead before closing the lid, trying not to look at the distastefully cheery illustration of fruit. If he has the ability to care for such things at this time, or the energy to express it, the very idea of burying his child in a carton that once held second-rate pears smuggled out from the Colu system would seem repulsive. Right now, it’s simply yet another injustice the galaxy has seen fit to inflict on him. _On them_ , Kylo corrects himself, remembering the emergency surgery Hux had to undergo right after the birth.

Carefully positioning the box into the small niche he’s dug into the earth, Kylo represses the memories of those frantic forty-five minutes spent outside the med bay, being refused entry multiple times, and nearly trashing the waiting room into scrap. The child doesn’t need to know the trouble her mother went through for her. There are other, happier things to tell her.

The words die on his suddenly constricted throat. Kylo brushes a callused finger on the shoddy durasteel, wishing that he hadn’t sealed the lid before telling his daughter… whatever he’d wanted to say. It feels foolish, even in the humid D’Qar forest where the only sentients are far, far away and occupied with personal drama of their own.

That is, attempting to explain to a dead child the reason for its existence, while speaking to a luridly coloured pear.

 _Near-existence_ , he thinks bitterly.

Still, he tries.

*

The last clod of earth falls onto the small mound of soil. Getting up from his kneeling position on the ground, Kylo finds that his cheeks are damp. He scrubs at them furiously with a black-clad arm, but the area is deserted as always. It’s cold comfort, that nobody can witness him make a bigger fool out of himself.

Before Kylo’s more than a few steps away from the grave, it occurs to him that a marker should be placed. However, there are no suitable rocks in the vicinity, and any flowers put there would wilt quickly. Faster than the duration his enemies would wait, before daring to visit the dead end their legacy had come to.

 Kylo tries his damnest not to image how they’ll desecrate it. Shoving his hands into robe pockets, he discovers a small Kunda stone in the left side. He’d been planning to keep it for building a child-size lightsabre, but that’s obviously not necessary anymore.

It rests on the dirt unobtrusively, and hopefully won’t garner the attention of the wrong people.

*

The dawning sky is streaked with orange, silhouetting the solitary figure boarding a small shuttle on the Resistance airstrip and the creeping foliage above him. It- he appears to be carrying nothing but a single duffel bag, but Kylo can read his lover’s intentions without using the Force. That does not mean that he won’t use it in other ways, though.

Without warning, Hux is pulled off the ramp as gently as he can manage from such a distance. Kylo all but sprints towards him, uncaring if anybody is awake to see this.

“Hux- what are you- how can you-” he gasps, his eyes wild.

In contrast, the smaller man is completely calm, though his demeanour softens slightly when he senses Kylo’s desperation.

A thin finger rests on Kylo’s lips, and Hux’s blue eyes glint, with resignation and resolution somehow mingling together into a powerful gaze that he can’t look away from.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispers.

“I just can’t do this anymore.” 

Kylo stifles his protests, waiting for Hux to continue instead.

“I used to be a General,” he begins. The other hand fists unconsciously at his side.

“Your lover,” and his lovely face tilts towards Kylo’s but moves no further. He tries not to be too disappointed.

The last few words come out too softly for him to hear, but Kylo can deduce what they are, judging from where the slight figure hunches down slightly, eyes skimming the edge of his stomach.

Kylo represses the urge to simply pick up Hux and kiss him, tell him no, that they still have a chance, he still has a chance to be a mother. He knows better than that. Knows what the blood-stained sheets and emergency surgery meant.

“I have to figure out what I am now, Kylo. Without you.”

With that parting blow that somehow hits him hard, somewhere deep inside, Hux turns around and boards the shuttle. It takes less than a minute for the twin engines to engage and ruffle Kylo’s hair as the small ship leaves D’Qar airspace, a small dark spot against the still-starry night sky.

He loses sight of it when it vanishes into a pale smudge of cloud, but continues to stare at it fixedly until the heavens lighten into blue, until the first X-Wings depart for morning patrol, until Leia finally embraces him into a tight hug, and that’s when his vision blurs too much to see anything anyway.

*

Over the years, Kylo volunteers for countless off-planet missions, scouring the galaxy from the Far Reaches right to the heart of Coruscant for what remains of the First Order. The Resistance tells him that there’s no need to make amends for what he’d done, killing Snoke was penance enough, but Kylo knows that that’s a flimsy excuse at best. He’s not looking for persistent scraps of the ruthless war machine; he’s looking for the one who’d controlled it. It’s the most he can admit, even to himself.

In time, the looks of pity the X-Wing pilots send his way when he boards his ship morph into expressions of exasperation, or even disgust. He couldn’t care less. It’s not like anyone on the various bases he’s visited ever bothered to extend more than an olive branch, and he’s not interested in them _that_ way, either.  Reuniting with his former childhood crush had taught him to be cautious. Especially so when he’d been the subject of a particularly vicious interrogation conducted by Kylo.

It has become second nature to disappear the moment he hears a distinctive baritone voice, or a certain bright orange uniform. Dameron tells him that all is forgiven, but his kind words are betrayed by a lingering wariness in his dark eyes. It would be cruel to stay around, for the both of them.

Kylo becomes a dark smudge on the edge of the Resistance consciousness, an incongruously stubborn stain that somehow manages to blend in, though not too successfully. He tries not to think too much of soft red hair, of slim hands which knew exactly where his sensitive spots were and just how much pressure to exert, and of freckles everywhere on milk-white skin.

When he touches himself, it’s an animalistic relief of base desires, with no particular idea in mind other than pleasure. No faces surface to awareness, least of all a certain flushed, sneering one.

He blankets himself in tasks, occupying any free time with tinkering with the droids or whatnot. In between missions, Kylo has become the default maintenance personnel, with people knocking at his door with all sorts of broken appliances. It’s comforting, knowing that his skill with machinery has not faded with years of disuse. Objects can be fixed. Relationships, not so much.

Leia tries, but the absence of Han is like an ugly scar neither of them can ignore.

*

This is how Kylo feels like when he sees a familiar shade of copper in the crowds of people on a random trade planet- like an old wound has been torn afresh, the pain multiplied in its startling revival. He sways a little on the spot, and Rey grips his arm tightly, concern evident in the draw of her brow. Kylo shakes his head to signal that he’s fine, and they continue to scan the seething mass of bodies, albeit for different things. The others look for their double agent, while Kylo is distracted, the old mixture of feelings-  betrayal interlaced with regret and shreds of hope stirring in his heart. Eventually, Finn spots the Togruta agent’s distinctive lekkus, and Kylo is pulled along by his excited companions.

He never notices a pair of piercing blue eyes glance in his direction, before turning away as if burned.

*

Once a week, not too often to make it mundane, but not too seldom to forget, Kylo flies to D’Qar and makes his way down a now-worn path to a little stand of trees five Galactic miles away from the old base. The Kunda stone has been long buried under the rich, dark soil, but Kylo knows where the grave is like he’d once known every contour of a certain face.

It’s the only reminder of Hux he permits himself.

As years went by, this has become something of a ritual: he kneels down onto the grassy soil, places a few flowers there, then tries to connect with the tiny soul in the Force. It became more difficult to do over time, as the presence of his dead daughter fades into the galaxy-encompassing energy. He isn’t sure what to feel about this- when he’d first started, the vibrant, blatantly alive presence was blinding to the point of pain, and he’d raged at how something so charged with power had been denied the chance to live. Now, accepting the fact that the dwindling connection he has with her is simply a by-product of time, it’s more like a dull ache that lessens, but never quite fades away.

He focuses, and the familiar, yet distant face of the girl swims into view. She’s stunning to behold, her russet hair grown long and tangled about her face, which looks at him with warm sea-green eyes.

She can’t talk to him, their connection being as tenuous as it is, but it’s reassuring to see that she’s growing up nicely, as only somebody absorbed into the Force can. Her grandmother fusses over her constantly, and Anakin is permanently ready to show off some new lightsabre techniques. But of course, this is a mere glimpse in the life that should have been. As always, he comes back to himself with sorrow and satisfaction leaving a bitter taste on his mouth.

*

Kylo never walks the path again when he can no longer sense her, and the jungle quickly makes it overgrown and wild again, much like his hold on sanity. The Resistance doesn’t ask him to go for missions anymore, and he doesn’t need to hazard a guess to know why. Still, he finds himself in the cockpit of his ship more often than not, picking planets at random, drinking himself to oblivion in countless cantinas.

Rey notices, of course, but most find it easier to dismiss him as a failed Jedi, Knight, recon pilot, everything. She is the only one who bothers to search for him at zero three hundred Standard hours in the cycle, passed out in a dank alley way and stinking of cheap Corellian brandy. Who checks in with Kylo at least every two days and make sure he’s alive. Who is, incidentally, the one who spots _him_ in a small civilian planet which is only notable for its lax security measures, evading the majority of any Republic patrols.

A small tug on his jacket is all that’s needed to alert Kylo to _his_ presence. He’s changed over the years, the military sharpness smoothed out and nearly soft, an almost untidy beard hiding much of his face. What draws Kylo’s attention the most, though, is a small boy clinging tightly to his arm. The child is not entirely unrecognizable as his son, though his eyes are stormy grey and definitely not something inherited from Hux. As the man attempts to soothe him, another person- a taller, graceful blonde man with steel eyes sides up to Hux and takes the boy from him.

When the blonde bends down to kiss Hux, Kylo nearly flinches, but manages to keep his expression neutral. Rey, though, is rapt with attention, her face glowing.

“He’s carrying,” she whispers, and of course Kylo can see that, can see the slight swell of his abdomen as the other man caresses him.

The Force ripples around Kylo as he struggles with himself, Rey’s joy for the man who was once her mortal enemy clashing with Kylo’s own wretched resentment.

“He’s carrying on with his life,” Kylo replies, his heart breaking and bursting at once.

*

“You should do the same,” says Rey, once they’re back on board Kylo’s ship. Kylo wants to lash out at her in anger, telling her that he doesn’t know what he’s feeling, what he’s going through, but instead, finds the furious energy gone. It’s not that he does not care about Hux anymore. He just doesn’t need to. There’s somebody else doing that.

“Yeah.” His answer is non-committal, but already, the thought of asking out that pretty scouting pilot makes blood rush to other areas.

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoying all the feels from your own writing is like laughing at your own joke, but nonetheless quite satisfying. I do hope that you have derived some happiness from reading this trash, or at least passably distracted from work. All feedback is appreciated, as this is the first time I'm writing in canon, kinda.


End file.
